What do we miss when we treat public shootings as the whole story of mass murder? If public events are a small slice, how should prevention and attention shift? Does saturation coverage turn tragedy into aspiration for the fame-seeking few? Do school “active-shooter” drills protect kids—or seed fear and imitation? Should reporting drop names and faces to starve the infamy motive? How should we talk about risk without distorting it? Can culture stop romanticizing guns without denying self-defense? Are the core drivers of public mass shootings nihilism, toxic self-regard, and a fascination with guns more than psychosis? If suicide removes the final barrier, how should that reshape prevention?Should screening target a narrow profile rather than broad traits with sky-high false positives? If most weapons used are legally owned, what levers actually matter - enforcement, registration, or smart-gun locks? Do “more weapons” predict fatalities better than weapon type, and what policy follows from that? What would it take for laws, norms, and platforms to make infamy harder to harvest? How do we design prevention that is specific, ethical, and effective?
Ragy Girgis, MD, MS, is a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry and New York State Psychiatric Institute. He is an expert in psychosis (e.g., schizophrenia), violence in mental illness, and mass murder/shootings. Dr. Girgis often conducts studies involving MRI, PET (Positron Emission Tomography) and clinical trials, and is the curator of the Columbia Mass Murder Database. Dr. Girgis has published numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers on these topics and several books on severe mental illness, including a recent book on the interface between religion and psychiatry, “On Satan, Demons, and Psychiatry: Exploring Mental Illness in the Bible."
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